Here are some pics from the process. The concept isn’t difficult. The tricky part is dealing with such small parts and such thin wire. The key for me is constantly being aware of what your hands and fingers are doing. Be mechanically aware. Hope y’all enjoy! :)

nice share!  😍 that's really neat, will be following through your making process and would want to see how the final results came out.

@russ great! Stewmac sells lots of parts and kits, but they’re $$$$. But to start out, try them their kits are very helpful

Cheers @SomethingNicer. I do like the Stewmac stuff but I tend to wait for their Sales. They have everything you need there....and more😂.

🎶🎸🙂🙏

afterwards I use tone-kraft for wire and Philadelphia luthiers supply for most everything else.

of course there are plenty of other vendors and if you’re not in America, my list may not be useful, but you get the idea

https://youtu.be/MxVLF-maqb4?si=0kwV3EvmCJInC033

There are tons of information out there about tonal quality of different copper and magnets and such. It’s kind of a rabbit hole to be honest 

basically there are 3 main types of wires to use, poly, heavy formvar, and enameled. Now at the core these are all the same copper wire. What’s different is the insulator and that makes a difference, I believe.

the vintage stuff from way back was all enameled wire. You have to actually sand the coating off to solder that

next is the heavy formvar wire which is used in some vintage stuff (and is probably my favorite)

then the poly, it’s cheaper and more modern but winds really well

these all have their own tonal qualities , but here’s a secret: I’m not sure I can actually tell a difference

honestly to really tell a difference you’d have to make identical pickups minus the wire change on identical guitars with identical strings and gauges (and the truth is there’s no such thing as two identical pickups)

now I can tell you they “feel” different, but who knows…

I will say that the different thicknesses of coatings do affect how tightly the copper is wound and how many winds can go on (formvar is thicker so you’d get fewer winds on a bobbin)

honestly, for me, I just started winding pickups. The key is keep a very detailed journal. Every detail you can think of down to the guitar it goes in. After awhile I think you can see some patterns.

one pickup I can make consistently is a neck strat pickup. It’s 8500 winds of poly with alnico2 magnets…. In a neck position it’s buttery smooth and I love it for blues..

Unfortunately idk that I have the vocabulary to actually describe what i hear differently, and I suspect that may be a bit unique person to person.

hope this helps. I’ve been winding for about a year, but that still makes me a newbie I think.

-chris 

🙂🎶🎸🙏

Will you post tutorial for making the winding machine?

Do you know if there is information about how to make pickups that sound like blues, jazz etc... or as guitarists like SRV etc...?

I try to understand what is the configuration of resistance and materials that have influence in sound, and make it more bluesy or more jazzy or any other style...

Thanks.

and for example, humbuckers use flat bar magnets the magnetic field is gonna be different for that so it will also affect tone

Thanks for taking the time to tell us how you go about making your own pickups, thats interesting stuff. Do you experiment with different windings to get different sounds?